No Longer Alone
by Lanthiriel25
Summary: Someone from Parker's past asks her to help him bring down the company who kidnapped his daughter, but things are not as they seem.


Summary: Someone from Parker's past asks her to help him bring down the company who kidnapped his daughter, but things are not as they seem.

Warnings: Moderate violence.

Disclaimer: Writing belongs to me. Everything else belongs to TNT and co. For entertainment purposes only.

AN: I love the themes of friendship, family and loyalty in the show and wanted to write a little something about that :) Hope you enjoy! Reviews are very much appreciated :)

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**No longer alone**

_By Lanthiriel25_

"I have people looking for me. They're gonna make you wish you hadn't gotten out of bed this morning!"

Parker narrowed her eyes, spitting out her words at the armed man who had sabotaged her escape and cuffed her to the heating pipe which protruded from the flaking wall. She blinked as the sweat, which beaded on her brow from the heat of the stuffy basement, stung her eyes. Being attached to the heater didn't help either, she mused wryly to herself as she fidgeted, trying to angle herself away from the hot plastic and metal. Her clothes stuck to her uncomfortably and the air felt thick and heavy in her lungs. She wiped her forehead as best she could on the back of her hand, quickly thinking through her admittedly limited options out of the situation.

Jake had contacted her in fear for his family; he had explained through tears that his daughter had been kidnapped and held for ransom and he'd asked her to help him steal the evidence from the corporation who he believed was behind it as confirmation of the extortion. She'd known Jake from her more mercenary days, but despite their acquaintance and her desire to help a young girl in trouble, Parker had learnt her lesson about keeping secrets from her team and working secret freelance jobs.

So, without consulting Jake, she'd contacted Nate and the others before she attempted the job, letting them know the situation and they had worked together to form a plan to allow her to infiltrate the most protected offices in one of the most secure buildings in the state. Despite asking for their help in the planning, Parker had insisted on working the job alone, the rest of the team staying at base; it was a simple theft, she'd argued, no elaborate heists required. The others hadn't liked it, but they'd agreed, knowing the plan was sound and that Parker knew exactly what she was doing.

Parker sighed to herself at the memory of Hardison making her full-on pinky-swear that she wouldn't take any unnecessary risks as she shifted her leg from underneath her when she began to feel the tingling sensation in her foot grow from her twisted position on the floor. Sure, she knew what she was doing, and she'd been deliberately, uncharacteristically, cautious, but being double-crossed by the cheating, lying Jake Mardell was not something she'd factored in to her plan. He'd used her intel to break into the office block too, using her route through the building to keep himself undetected. Parker hadn't known anyone else was in the building until she'd felt the blinding, disorientating pain of a gun handle being cracked over the back of her head. Her vision had swum as she'd instinctively turned to face the threat, throwing her arms outwards, fists clenched ready to fend off her attacker. Parker had lunged out desperately, unsure of which of the three, identical blurry men in front of her was real. Another swift blow to her temple had her crashing to the floor, unconscious.

The next thing she'd known was waking up, trapped in a storage room in the basement of the building and cuffed to a pipe. Jake was crowing about how predictable and easy to manipulate she was, how she'd served her purpose in retrieving the documents for him. Parker's heart sank as she listened to his annoying and decidedly pompous monologuing; it would seem he hadn't needed the documents to condemn the company and save his daughter. Instead they were to sell to the highest bidder, perfect blackmail material to compromise company members and practices and to extract company-held state secrets. All Jake had to do now was to get rid of any loose ends, get rid of Parker.

Parker's head throbbed where she'd been struck. She raised a hand to carefully touch the blossoming bruise to assess the damage, grimacing as her other wrist was dragged along for the ride, the cuffs chaffing at her skin. Her fingers itched to pick the lock, but Jake knew her too well; the cuffs had no release, once they'd been snapped shut nothing short of industrial metal cutters would get them loose, and Parker was working light on this job.

"People? Looking out for you?!" Jake scoffed, a disbelieving, patronising expression twisting on his face as he made quick work of rifling through her retrieval bag. "Gimme a break. You forget, I know you Parker, and you've got no-one. You're all alone in the world; no-one to love and no-one who loves you. It's why you make such a great thief."

He smiled as he pulled out the incriminating files from her stash, holding them up as if to prove his point. Flipping one of the covers, quickly scanning the contents, verifying them, he then hurriedly slid them into his brown briefcase before clicking the lid shut and spinning the dials. Parker rolled her eyes, wondering why people still even bothered with such primitive security measures; it wasn't as if she couldn't break her way into said briefcase and appropriate the contents in less than three seconds flat, without even a single fingerprint on the high-class leather. Or she would, if she wasn't cuffed to heating pipe with a gun pointed at her head.

Despite her situation however Parker felt a smile pull at the corner of her mouth. She knew she was a great thief, just like Jake had said, but being alone wasn't what made her so great. If you'd asked her that several years ago, she would have agreed whole-heartedly, but now…now she knew better. She'd learned it the hard way but she knew she was a better thief now, a better person, than she'd ever been, thanks to the love and support of her friends. It was thanks to Sophie, Hardison, Eliot and Nate that she felt more comfortable in the world she lived in and her place in it. She knew what it was like to be all alone in the world; it was painful, bleak, lonely. But she also knew that she would never feel like that again. Even if she was on her own on a job, she was never truly alone, no longer lost or uncared for, no longer abandoned and left to fend for herself. She frowned. Jake knew nothing about the world, and he knew nothing about her.

Glancing subtly at her watch she realised she was already ten minutes late for the meeting time in the all night café two blocks over, where she'd promised to meet Nate, Sophie, Eliot and Hardison once the job was done. She didn't dare imagine what her friends were busy doing right now, given her tardiness and their mile-deep protective streak; whatever they'd come up with she was sure Jake wouldn't like it.

"You should've done your homework Jake," she almost sing-songed, smiling brightly as she thought of her team, before she returned to absent-mindedly picking at her fraying laces on her shoes. "I have friends now."

Unnerved by her casual acceptance of the predicament she was in, Jake made his way over to her, crouching down to her level and invading her space. His body language screamed control and intimidation, a twisted snarl on his face. This got him nothing more than a cursory glance before Parker began inspecting the abrasions on her right wrist, an expression of boredom etched on her features. Jake growled in frustration at Parker's seeming calm, nervously running his eyes over her and the small room, wondering what plan she was busy putting into motion; he was sure she had one, otherwise why would she be so collected?

"What is it? Huh?" he demanded, pushing the gun up under her chin, causing her to tilt her head up at an awkward, uncomfortable angle, meeting his gaze. He smiled cruelly, satisfied as he saw a glimmer of fear flicker in the depths of eyes.

"What. Are. You. Up. To.?" he enunciated again, pressing the gun harder into her jaw to show he wasn't bluffing.

Parker swallowed heavily, eyes flicking around the room in a seemingly random fashion, lingering for a fraction of second on the cracked ceiling.

"I'm not doing anything. Just…"

Her words broke off as Jake's expression darkened at her denial and he primed the gun, ready to fire at a moment's provocation. Parker let out a shaky breath as she closed her eyes, her lips moving silently, soundlessly counting to herself. Jake pulled back slightly in confusion, feeling his low-level worry growing at Parker's seeming confidence.

He startled at a loud crash coming from somewhere further up the corridor. He could hear footsteps coming closer, sweat trickling uncomfortably down the side of his face as he strained to work out what was going on behind the barricaded door. Suddenly the door vibrated as something heavy was slammed against it. Jake backed away from his side of the door, fiddling worriedly with the gun, glancing at Parker who was now sitting cross-legged and happily smiling, completely unfazed. Sounds of a scuffle drifted through the barricade, soft grunts and the sound of fists connecting with flesh painted a vivid picture about what was happening to his hired bodyguards. He fumbled with his gun, his palms beginning to sweat, feeling cornered, trapped, as the sounds of a violent exchange continued outside the door. He started, snapping his head upwards, as he heard rustling in the vents above them, but, that couldn't be right, they were cemented up, he'd checked.

After a final crash from the corridor there was silence, almost deafening to Jake's ears; he could hear his heart pounding in fearful anticipation, his breath stuttering. He hated feeling afraid, unsure; men like him did not feel fear. People should not be able to make him feel this way; he caused fear, he didn't feel it. He jumped as someone knocked loudly on the door, before choking out a self-deprecating laugh as a heavily accented female voice began to speak.

"Hello? It's janitor staff. Someone in there? You alright? Men out here on floor, knocked out. You can come out now. Safe."

Distracted by the disjointed voice, trying to decide whether she was genuine or a trap, Jake didn't notice the flickering of the lights at first. But he sure noticed the full-on power surge, blacking everything out for a moment before the power spiked higher than before. Wide eyes darted desperately around the room, coming to rest on Parker with a snarl. Grabbing a fistful of Parker's hair, he hauled her off the floor as much as her cuffs would allow, shaking her roughly in his uncertainty and fear.

"What…!?" he hissed through his teeth, panic bubbling through him as the lights began to flash in earnest and the pounding on the door began again. It couldn't end this way; he had to get out of there, with the files, or he was finished. "What's…What's going on?...Who's out there?"

"That…" Parker smirked, her voice honey sweet, "would be my family."

Suddenly the lights went out completely, sending everything in to pitch darkness. He was shoved backwards until he collided with the shelves which lined the opposite wall, maintenance equipment raining down around him as he winced in pain, falling to his knees at the impact. He flung his arms out desperately to try to balance and orientate himself in the darkness.

Not ten seconds later the emergency electrical system came online, lighting up the room with a sickly yellow glow. Jake shielded his eyes against the sudden brightness, squinting as he took in the room…the empty room. He spun on the spot in disbelief, twisting this way and that, his knees grinding into the dirt on the floor as he did so. Parker was gone, along with her bag and all of her equipment; it wasn't possible. He quickly scrambled over to his briefcase, fingers working quickly to input his code. Snapping the lid open, he slumped to the ground as he saw the files were gone.

The briefcase wasn't empty though; inside there was his empty pair of handcuffs, still closed and completely intact, and a camera. Choosing to ignore the mystery of the cuffs, he picked up the camera, carefully holding it in shaking hands as he scanned the room, trying to work out what on earth had happened, where Parker had gone. Switching on the device he saw that there was only one video saved to the hard drive; he pushed the play button, morbid curiosity getting the better of him. There was nothing but static for a few seconds before he heard his voice ringing out loud and clear over the small speakers, confessing to the theft, the potential buyers, the extortion, everything. Jake quickly hit the stop button, before frantically trying to erase the memory card, but found he couldn't; the controls had been jammed so the camera couldn't be tampered with and the card slot soldered over preventing manual removal. He ran a trembling hand across his face, as everything seemed to fall apart around him. He froze as he heard a loud knock from the door.

"Police! Open up! Jake Mardell, we know you are in there. You are under arrest for theft of government property, trading state secrets, and several accounts of extortion and fraud. Open this door or we will break it down."

Jake slammed the briefcase closed, intent on hiding the evidence somewhere in the room, when a note taped to the leather caught his eye. Sparing a fearful glance at the barricade as the police began to expertly ram the door, Jake pulled the case closer, spinning it to read the note.

He quickly shoved the briefcase away from himself with a panicked gasp, shaking his head, not wanting to believe that such a perfect, simple plan could have gone so spectacularly wrong. Mere minutes later the police had broken through, read him his rights and frogmarched him, cuffed, from the basement to the arrest car waiting for him outside the building. The briefcase and camera were appropriated and the evidence processed.

No-one noticed however the small sticky-note which drifted to the floor from the case, unheeded in the bustle of the arrest. The faded piece of paper lay innocently in the middle of the empty storage room, amongst the dust and grime.

_We are family. We look after our own._

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Two blocks over, Eliot returned to take his place at their table, having just gotten off the phone to the local police department, wrapping everything up. He slid the large plate of garlic bread they were sharing towards him and snagged a slice, tucking in along with everyone else, laughing, joking together, a family. Parker gazed at her friends surrounding her, perched comfortably on the ornate metal chairs around the stylish Italian-style table. She looked at each one of them in turn, enjoying their smiles, their laughs, their happy, boisterous voices and passionate gestures as they argued vehemently over the last piece of bread. She smiled to herself, basking in the knowledge that these people were her family.

Comfortable in this knowledge, Parker reached out across the table to swipe the precious last garlic slice, chuckling around her food as her friends turned to her, faces shocked, stunned into silence at her cheekiness. Mouth full, Parker just laughed, happy to have a family of her own, to love each and every one of them and to be loved in return; she was safe, needed, protected, and she would never be alone again.

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The End

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Thanks for reading :) Reviews are very much appreciated :)


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